her half-swallowed
sobs. "I need my friends' help with my children, not to have them make
it hard for me. Henrietta is devoted to you and you could influence her
so for the best. Please try to help me make a real woman out of her and
not some sort of a terrible--terrible suffragette."

Sallie is the most perfectly lovely woman I almost ever saw. She has
great violet eyes with black lashes that beg you for a piece of your
heart, and her mouth is as sweet as a blush rose with cheeks that almost
match it in rosiness. She and the babies always remind me of a cluster
rose and roses, flower and buds, and I don't see why every man that sees
her is not mad about her. They all used to be before she married, and I
suppose they will be again as soon as the crepe gets entirely worn off
her clothes. As she stood with the bubbly baby in her arms and looked
up at Polk I couldn't see how he could take it calmly.

"Sallie," he answered seriously, with a glint in his eyes over at me,
"if you'll give me a few days longer, I will then have found out by
experience what a real woman is and I'll begin on Henrietta for you
accordingly."

"Don't be too hard on the kiddie," Cousin James answered him with the
crinkle in the corner of his eyes that might have been called shrewd in
eyes less beautifully calm. "Let's trust a lot to Henrietta's powers of
observation of her mother and--her neighbors." He smiled suddenly, with
his whole face, over both Sallie and me, and went on down the street in
a way that made me sure he was forgetting all about all of us before he
reached the corner of the street.

"Isn't that old mossback a treat for the sight of gods and men?" asked
Polk with a laugh as we all stood watching the old gray coat-tails
flapping in the warm breeze that was rollicking across the valley.

"I don't know what I would do without him," said Sadie softly, with
tears suddenly misting the violets in her eyes as she turned away from
us with the baby in her arms and went slowly up the front walk of
Widegables.

"Please come stay with me a little while, Evelina," she pleaded back
over her shoulder. "I feel faint."

I hesitated, for, as we were on my side of the Road, Polk was still my
guest.

"Go on with Sallie, sweetie," he answered my hesitating. "I don't want
the snapped-off fraction of a declaration like you were about to offer
me. I can bide my time--and get my own." With which he turned and got
into his car as I went across the s